A Public-Radio Reporter Helps Build Alaskan Wilderness Trails

Everyone in Alaska has a story of how they ended up here. I grew up in Wilton, Conn., and when I was in fourth grade I had a camp counselor who later moved to Alaska. He kept in touch with me and sent me pictures. I put a map of Alaska on my wall, and I always wanted to come here.

I’ve always loved the outdoors, even though my family is not particularly outdoorsy. At Tufts University, I majored in environmental studies and geology, because you got to go on great field trips.

LISA BUSCH Age: 38 First nonprofit job: Reporter , KCAW radio, Sitka, Alaska Current Volunteer Jobs: Board president, Sitka Trail Works; board member, Sitka Tree and Landscape Committee

I thought I’d become a veterinarian, but I wasn’t very good at biology, so I wound up writing about science instead. The skills I learned as a reporter — listening, observing, finding out how things work, synthesizing information — definitely helped when I started Sitka Trail Works, a group that builds and maintains trails in Sitka, Alaska.

After college I got a fellowship with the American Association for the Advancement of Science that matches recent graduates with media organizations. Everyone else got placed at organizations like The New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle, but I got placed at a dinky public-radio station in Greeley, Colo. I wrote science stories all summer, and I really enjoyed it. After that, my plan of going to work for the Department of Agriculture back East sounded really dull, so I bagged it. Instead, I applied for a job as a public-radio reporter at KCAW, the station in Sitka. Alaska public-radio stations are famous for hiring people without a lot of experience and with a liberal-arts education. And I lied and said I was a quick learner.

After two years I left the radio station to do freelance science writing, and then after a few years I went back. A year ago I quit reporting to concentrate on raising my two daughters. I also started a small business, writing grants for local nonprofit groups, and I help my husband with his wildlife tour-guide business. It’s funny: I’ve been here 17 years, built two houses, got married, had two kids — and my whole family still thinks living in Alaska is a “stage.”

Sitka Trail Works got started in 1994 a year after Sitka’s largest employer, Alaska Pulp Company, closed its mill. The city eventually got $18-million in federal economic disaster-relief money, and officials solicited grant proposals for spending it. I’m not a jock hiker person, but I like to hike with my family, and I thought some of the money could be used to fix up the Mount Verstovia trail that was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

If you don’t have experience walking around here, the rain forest can be a dark and scary place. Trails allow people to access the wilderness. Trails can also be an economic benefit for the community because they attract visitors — and perhaps some of those visitors might want to stay and set up shop in a place that has a great trail system.

I started Sitka Trail Works with several other trail enthusiasts, with the initial goal of hiring displaced timber workers from the mill and retraining them to fix up old trails. We got some of the federal grant money and hired 25 people who helped restore eight miles of trails, but eventually they got permanent jobs.

We shifted our focus to raising money to pay for trail construction and maintenance and promoting trail use. I am now using my reporter skills to help produce short radio announcements with the diabetes-prevention people at a regional hospital for native Alaskans. The spots basically say, ‘Hey, get out on a trail, it’s good for you.’ We really want to build a constituency of trail users.

Trails in southeast Alaska are not easy to build because of the terrain. It’s not like you can put down a bunch of dirt and call it good. So we can’t build trails with a bake sale, and we don’t have a lot of big industry here anymore to ask for help. We depend on bigger foundations and government entities to pay for our construction projects. Last year I went to Washington to talk to our representatives in Congress about receiving federal money to pay for our trail projects, particularly one we are trying to build that leads to some buildings used by troops in World War II. My experience reporting short radio stories helps me get our message across quickly and succinctly.

One of our earliest projects was to map out a local trail plan, which had never been done for this area. We sat down with the different landowners in Sitka — the federal, state, city, and borough governments, as well as the Sitka tribe of Alaska — and said, OK, let’s do a coordinated effort to build trails and get the community involved. We did surveys and held hearings, then we applied for grants. I had gotten a few grants to produce radio documentaries, so I knew how to write proposals. I knew nothing about building trails, but my experience as a reporter taught me that I can find out anything. I did research and talked to lots of people about getting different permits, land-conservation easements, and other issues.

In addition, working at the public-radio station gave me a good model of how to shape a nonprofit membership organization that was well-supported by the local community. We now have 400 members who help pay our operating costs and volunteer to help maintain trails.

Sitka Trail Works is now more like my hobby, but in the beginning it might as well have been another full-time job.

When we hired an executive director a few years ago I thought about doing the job myself, but it felt like too big a jump from journalism and I wanted to concentrate on my family. My role now is as an active board member. The board is trying to figure out ways to raise more money for operating support, so we don’t have to dig in our pockets every so often to pay the phone bill.

In 2000 I started another group, the Sitka Tree and Landscape Committee. I took a card from the Sitka Trail Works deck and devised a community planting plan after asking residents what ugly places in town needed improvement. Last year we planted 15 trees and 1,000 small plants around the local middle school. I am a black thumb when it comes to plants, but I am big into the idea of beautifying the community and bringing the town together.

I feel like a pretty typical Alaskan — people are just very involved in their communities here.

Because my relatives live in the lower 48, I know that people don’t feel as connected to one another because they drive to other towns for jobs. Sitka has 8,800 people, and it’s on an island. There are only 16 miles of road. You can’t drive anywhere. And when you are in a setting like that, you can’t help but get involved.